PEAR is an acronym for PHP Extension and Application Repository. It is a repository of PHP packages or extensions. You can freely incorporate any of these extensions from PEAR in your code. The PEAR project was established by Stig S. Bakken in 1999.
Most of the precompiled distributions of PHP such as XAMPP already have PEAR bundled with it. If not, you can install PEAR by downloading go-pear.phar file from https://pear.php.net/go-pear.phar and run
php go-pear.phar
In a Windows Command Prompt to start the installation.
Based on your responses to the setup steps, the PEAR Package Manager will be installed in the path, specified during installation.
You can then add that installation path to your PATH environment. Either do this manually (Start > Control Panel > System > Environment) or run (double-click) the newly generated PEAR_ENV.reg that’s now found in the PHP source directory.
You can now access the PEAR Package Manager by running the command −
C:\xampp\php>pear
In a Windows Command Prompt.
You will get the list of PEAR commands as follows −
C:\xampp\php>pear
Commands:
build Build an Extension From C Source
bundle Unpacks a Pecl Package
channel-add Add a Channel
channel-alias Specify an alias to a channel name
channel-delete Remove a Channel From the List
channel-discover Initialize a Channel from its server
channel-info Retrieve Information on a Channel
channel-login Connects and authenticates to remote channel server
channel-logout Logs out from the remote channel server
channel-update Update an Existing Channel
clear-cache Clear Web Services Cache
config-create Create a Default configuration file
config-get Show One Setting
config-help Show Information About Setting
config-set Change Setting
config-show Show All Settings
convert Convert a package.xml 1.0 to package.xml 2.0 format
cvsdiff Run a "cvs diff"for all files in a package
cvstag Set CVS Release Tag
download Download Package
download-all Downloads each available package from the default channel
info Display information about a package
install Install Package
listList Installed Packages In The Default Channel
list-all List All Packages
list-channels List Available Channels
list-files List Files In Installed Package
list-upgrades List Available Upgrades
login Connects and authenticates to remote server [Deprecated in favor of channel-login]
logout Logs out from the remote server [Deprecated in favor of channel-logout]
makerpm Builds an RPM spec file from a PEAR package
package Build Package
package-dependencies Show package dependencies
package-validate Validate Package Consistency
pickle Build PECL Package
remote-info Information About Remote Packages
remote-listList Remote Packages
run-scripts Run Post-Install Scripts bundled with a package
run-tests Run Regression Tests
search Search remote package database
shell-test Shell Script Test
sign Sign a package distribution file
svntag Set SVN Release Tag
uninstall Un-install Package
update-channels Update the Channel List
upgrade Upgrade Package
upgrade-all Upgrade All Packages [Deprecated in favor of calling upgrade with no parameters]Installing packages with PEAR is so easy. One way to find packages, is using the official PEAR site https://pear.php.net/packages.php and then run
pear install <package-name>The next step is to use the PEAR package in your code. To do that, you should include the main PHP script of the package in your program with include, require, include_once or require_once statements.
<?php
include "PEARPACKAGE.php";
. . . . .
// rest of the code
. . . . .
?>A newer PHP package manager called Composer is an alternative available for managing packages for a PHP project. Composer also supports the installation of PEAR packages. Composer is preferred by many instead of PEAR for PHP package distribution.
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